Tuesday January 12, 2016 • Howard Tayler

The current storyline has some people wondering if I’m “taking a page from Mass Effect,” or perhaps [insert popular SF here.]

For the record, I’ve played about 60 minutes of Mass Effect, and didn’t love it. I moved on to other games.

I am, however, familiar with Fermi’s Paradox, and have extensively explored the solution sets, none of which are particularly optimistic. Those sets look quite a bit different if they are constrained by the canon of the Schlockiverse, but not so different as to be internally inconsistent.

What this means is that yes, among a hundred thousand readers, somebody will definitely be able to correctly guess key plot points. Science has been grinding on this stuff for decades.

But I’m not borrowing from anybody else’s fiction for this. I’m going whole cloth from the science. What THIS means is that despite the likelihood that 100,000 Schlock Mercenary readers can generate a speculation set that contains actual plot, I’m still going to surprise you.

But only if I shut up now.

So, you know, speculate among one another, but not here (comments are closed,) and for the love of hull integrity, please show some respect for a different boundary, and do NOT ask ME about this stuff.